I Wrote This Blog With My Thumbs...

...while sitting in the doctor's office. (No, not the doctor's office where I work. The one where I'm currently sitting and waiting.)

By the way, I upgraded my phone last weekend, because my stepson's phone had died. So he got my iPhone4S, which was and still is a fine device, and I got a new Samsung Galaxy S5. It was my first venture outside Apple's smartphone range in five years.

Chief among the differences is that the screen of the new phone is freaking huge. Which makes the part of this work that I do on my phone, namely review, revision, and some bits of furious writing, much easier. Thank you, Samsung.

Something I find myself doing as I get further into the story is having to decide which plot thread to pick up next. I have three main bits going, defined by three main characters (or sets of characters) that were set forth in the first few chapters, but it takes a bit of finesse to figure out which one to work on next. Because while I feel I have a pretty good idea of what's happening everywhere right now, it makes my own life easier if I prioritize the three as I go. Or will make my life easier, once I'm done with the first draft.

Oh, and:

Day 34

Today's word count: 1,291
Overall word count: 38,091

Thanks for reading!

Making Up For Lost Time

Day 33
Today's word count: 2,104
Overall word count: 36,800

Yesterday my lovely wife and I were kid-free, so we spent most of the afternoon up in Park City, where I was quickly reminded of the swift, hammer-like arrival of beer to the brain at 7,000 feet above sea level. We also took the tour of High West Distillery and ate at their excellent on-site restaurant. And picked up a bottle of this Shakespearean libation:

Didn't crack it open, though. I think it'll be more of a special occasion tipple. Anyway, I didn't get anything written yesterday. But I did keep thinking, which made today's writing rather effortless. Lots of conversation, lots of exposition, little asskicking.

A month in, I'm closing in on 150 pages. I could end up being surprised one way or the other, but if the plot threads I've thrown out there end up the way I think they will, I think I'm just a little under halfway done. Say 350 pages. We'll see.

OH SHIT, said the monks.

Day 29
Today's word count: 1,746
Overall word count: 32,355

Yesterday I said that writing this story feels like riding a roller coaster. Also, my story has yellow-robed monks in it. Therefore, I offer up this photo without comment:

I'm still very much rocking and rolling down the track. I know what's happening, but I'm frankly too exhausted to type any more of it out coherently tonight. Which means tomorrow will probably be an even bigger day than today. I know ol' Steve King gets out 2,000 words a day, but I have a day job, y'know? On some days, my brain is already half-fried by the time I sit down to write.

Further concerns include my characters. I don't think I have much, really, in the way of purely good girls/guys and purely bad girls/guys. I mean, I've already mentioned that my protagonist is an asshole. I'm trying to have people, with plausible thoughts and wants, whether they're the most loathsome characters, or really sweet individuals who have been pulled into the plot by forces beyond their control. But I do wonder if my good guys are good enough, and my bad guys are bad enough.

I'm considering posting a few passages or short chapters here on this blog, earlier ones that I feel pretty solid about.

Until next time, thanks for reading! Nobody is commenting except for my good friend Joe, but I can see from the Google analytics that people are reading. Assuming that not all of you are bots...hello!

The Roller Coaster

Day 28
Today's word count: 1,130
Overall word count: 30,609

Well, the wymynz be done talkin, for the moment at any rate. And more things are about to happen.

OMG OMG OMG I'm excited for people to read this. I felt today as though I were in that autopilot mode where I knew exactly what was going to happen, what needed to happen, and the only thing I had to worry about was getting it typed out properly. That's the fun part of all this.

Thinking about it now, writing this book feels like a roller coaster.

There's the part where I'm thinking about the world, the characters, and the situations. What happens now? What should happen now? What's plausible? And how would people react to it? That's the hard part. Those are the days where I squeeze out 300 words. That's where the roller coaster is ratcheting itself up the track: k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack, k-chack...

And then there are the days where there's a flash of insight, of inspiration, where I see clearly what is going to happen next. And it's awful, or awesome, or hilarious or badass. Days where I effortlessly toss off 1000, or 2000 or 3000 or 4000 words, and the only concern is my 70 WPM fingers keeping up with a brain that is not only 100+ WPM, but has also been working on this all day while the rest of me was in meetings. And it feels like the first big drop on a roller coaster: hands in the air, screaming, adrenaline up, knowing cognitively that everything's going to work out fine, but being freaked out and exhilarated all at once.

YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

And, much like a roller coaster, even the so-called hard part is pretty cool. I just hope there's someone at the end, trying to sell me a grainy photo of myself writing for $8.00.

Wymynz Be Talkin

Day 26
Today's word count: 1,043
Overall word count: 28,994

Well, whatever else this novel may end up being or not being, I now know it definitely passes the Bechdel test.

Both Sides Now

Day 24
Today's word count: 1,456
Overall word count: 27,427

A good, strong day. Hit it, Joni.

Formatted as I have it (and I'm aiming for about the same words-per-page ratio as a book), I'm on page 113. That's halfway to the end of a short novel, a third of the way to the end of a decently-sized one, a quarter or a fifth of the way to the end of a long one. I let my wife read the manuscript so far, and she scoffed at the idea that I could be halfway done at this point. I agree. Big world, big story. I've totally bitten off more than I can chew here. Yet I keep grinding out the pages, and I think they're pretty good so far.

One thing I did today is retell a scene from earlier in the story, only this time from the point of view of one of the other characters who was there. I didn't really intend to, but it just came out. I really, really like it, but my head is so far up the ass of this story that I have zero perspective. I have no idea whether it's actually cool, or just ham-handed. The task of determining that will fall to the people I ask to read the first draft, once it's done.

Take care! Thanks for reading.

Blood and Alcohol

Day 20
Today's word count: 675
Overall word count: 24264

Whoa! Some words and a new character. Not sure where HE came from. But I'm a bit tipsy and he seems like an interesting fellow, so I'll be back for more of him tomorrow. I wonder if Stephen King's edict of "I write 2000 words a day, but you can do 1000 if you're a sissy" is going to work for me at all. Because I feel pretty accomplished about today, despite getting only 600-some words.

Then there were those days where I did 4000+ or 3000+. I dunno.

Also, my wife is watching Game of Thrones on Netflix on her laptop. I can see it out of the corner of my eye, so I better close my Google Doc before I just decide to kill all my cool characters and leave the assholes.

See you next time!

In Which The Shit Gets Real

Day 18
Today's word count: 1775
Overall word count: 22710

BOOM! goes the roadblock.

I stalled out for a day or two. I think it's because I got to what feels like the end of "Act 1." Some early conflict worked its way out, and opened the door to bigger conflict. Most of the story lines hit kind of a hump. I had to think hard about what comes next.

This world is getting bigger and more complex in a hurry. I think I chose a pretty tough setting for a first novel. The imagining isn't hard; I've been building imaginary worlds in my head for as long as I can remember. The hard part is the exposition: how much to show the reader, and when and how. I want people to be curious about what's around the corner, and about what things mean, but not to feel completely in the dark.

I'm excited to keep going! I'm excited to find out what happens next. And if I'm going, "Oh man, how the hell are they going to get through this," I can only hope that someone reading will feel the same way.

Aim High!

Day 15
Today's word count: 213
Overall word count: 20507

Don't let today's meager word count mislead you: I feel as though I got a lot done today. Most importantly, I realized what needs to happen next; the only plausible thing that could happen, given what the main characters want. So that's good.

If you're reading this as I write, as opposed to after the finished product is published, you probably have no idea what the hell this book going to be about. Allow me to tell you.

I have a ton of...I won't even call them influences, but things that have gone into the literary melting pot between my ears. Legendary authors (Melville! Marquez! Hemingway!). Classic authors (Somerset Maugham! Rudyard Kipling!). Really good contemporary authors (Stephen King!). Contemporary genre writers (Neal Stephenson! Brandon Sanderson!). Best-selling authors of my lifetime (Grisham! Cornwell!). Mediocre authors who nonetheless sell a shitload of books (I won't name them!). They've all wormed their way into my brain, and whatever worms its way back out is probably due, in some way, to them.

Having said that, I find myself referring back, over and over again, to two of my favorite living writers. One is, if not the, one of the world's most successful authors. The other is a writer whom you might not have heard of, even though he's flirted with mainstream success in the past.

They are Stephen King and Richard Herley.

Stephen King, I trust, needs no introduction from me. Speaking personally, I avoided his work religiously well into adulthood, thanks to two factors: one, his reputation as a "horror writer"; and two, the almost uniformly awful quality of the films based on his books. Because of those two facts, I didn't read anything by Stephen King until 1998 (age 25) or so. Since then, I've read close to 30 of his books.

Richard Herley is a ridiculously talented novelist who, in spite of being an award-winning and Hollywood-adapted author, toiled in obscurity for many years. I first encountered his work, ironically, not too long before I read my first Stephen King.

With inspiration from these two, I'm crafting the book I'm working on right now.

Stephen King has quite a bit of range as a writer, but my favorite books of his involve normal people, in a nominally normal world, dealing with inexplicable or supernatural situations. It's almost as if he takes the real world like a pond, tosses in a single supernatural pebble (Some people are psychic! or Johnny can see the future! or This town is full of vampires!), and documents the ripples that result. What makes him believable, what makes him unputdownable, is that the people in his books react to these situations like you and I would...or would like to. The vividness of his imagination is what I love.

Richard Herley is an absolute master of the craft of writing. Whether he's writing brainy thrillers, razor-sharp action novels, immaculately researched period pieces, or one of my five favorite novels period, his prose is sheer magic. He's experienced a bit of a resurgence in the last two or three years, topping the Amazon e-book charts, but nonetheless he remains a relative unknown compared to some far, far inferior writers who have commanded far more attention.

From Stephen King, I'm taking the kind of story I like to read: a story where a regular person, or regular people, are thrown into a new world, and get to know it, and react to it, right along with the reader. I refer back to King every time I ask, "What would ________ really do in this situation?" King gives me the view from 30,000 feet.

From Richard Herley, I'm taking the kind of story I would like to write: full of elegant clarity, crafty sentence structure, and sublime word choices. I refer back to him every time I find myself trying to convey an action sequence clearly and vividly, or trying to decide exactly how much to describe a new setting. Herley helps me down in the trenches, where I'm digging towards my goal one sentence at a time.

I fully expect to fall far short on both fronts, but I could fall far short of these two and still come up with a pretty damned entertaining yarn.

Grindy Grind Grind

Day 13
Today's word count: 1267
Overall word count: 19856

Good feeling. Crossed a roadblock (I spent most of the weekend reading what I'd already written, and thinking), and wrote a pretty good chunk today.

Things I'm thinking about:

1) What is happening to <character>, and how would I react to it if it were me?
2) Repeat Step 1 for each major character.
3) What new external event, if any, is going to happen, and how will it affect the people involved in Steps 1 and 2?
4) Are any of the people mentioned or introduced in Step 3 important or interesting enough that they deserve further exposition, or that anyone would care what happens to them?

As the characters in this story step to the fore and tell me who they are and what they care about, I find myself going back and rewriting their earlier dialogue to sound more like themselves. I'm doing a lot of rewriting as I go, and I still feel as though I will end up with a fairly polished first draft. What will be interesting is letting this draft sit for a month or two, once I'm done with it, and re-examining it as a stranger, or as much of a stranger as I can manage. What will be awesome? What will be boring? What will be obvious or phony-seeming? I am not sure yet.

When I get to that point, I will probably enlist the help of some of you.

A Room of Thumbs' Own

(As of last night)

Day 9
Yesterday's word count: 50
Overall word count: 17237

No new writing yesterday; just some editing and rewriting during lunch that ended up adding a few lines. My kid brother Paul was in town, passing through on his way to Seattle with a friend, so the evening time that would normally have gone to writing, ended up going instead to whiskey and beer. That's just fine.

One thing I did accomplish yesterday was to pull my (non-HD) Kindle Fire out of mothballs and give it access to my Google Drive and Google Docs. It makes for a much less cramped reading and writing surface than my phone, and I think I will use it going forward. If I'm going to write a book with my thumbs, I may as well make it as easy as possible on them, right?

I'm excited for the next few things happening in my story. I can't decide which plot thread to pick up and move forward with next, which is a pretty good problem to have.

My protagonist is an asshole.

Day 8
Today's word count: 4,495
Overall word count: 17,197

EDIT, ALMOST A MONTH LATER: Holy fucking shit, I wrote 4,500 words today?! Did I really think this was going to be normal?!

----------------------------------------

Another good day. I wrote a ton of stuff this morning before work, did editing and rewrite throughout lunch, and wrote a bunch more this evening. I guess, when you have a lot to say, 2000 words is not an unattainable goal. I think I'm a pretty fast writer (even with my thumbs) when my brain is going.

The biggest chunk of today's writing has been a lengthy conversation between two of my primary characters. It involves a ton of exposition. Because this story is introducing a new and (I think, I hope) unique world, quite a bit of exposition is needed. As one of the participants in this long conversation is new to this world, I'm using it as an opportunity to bring the reader up to speed as well. But I'm leery of making the exposition too obvious; I'm reminded of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn novels (which I love; don't get me wrong), where one of my biggest annoyances is that in any dialogue, the characters appear to be speaking half to each other and half to me, the reader. Crummy dialogue pulls me out of a story faster than almost anything else, and because of that, I'm hyper-conscious of my own. So I plan to reread these passages for my second draft, and I intend to ask myself at every turn whether the dialogue feels like two real people talking.

Next...not even issue, but observation: my protagonist is an asshole.

He's fairly likable, in the way of most protagonists*, but he's an asshole. I couldn't be his friend in real life. Womanizer. Pathological liar. Misogynist. Douchebag in general. I'm trying not to force him to do anything, instead just trying to have him react realistically to the situations in which he finds himself, but I do wonder if he's going to grow or change at all.

Another note: I have no idea how to do this, how to write a book, except for what I've picked up from Stephen King in On Writing. Going into this with his ideas as gospel, it's interesting to see the ways in which his ideas work for me, and the ways in which I am defying his wisdom and advice.

His philosophy (and this is condensed; you should read his very excellent book if you are curious) seems to be: Move fast. Write fast. Keep your confidence up. Don't plot things in advance; just come up with your basic situation and setting and let things play out. Don't show your work to anyone else until your first draft is completely done. Don't rewrite as you go; just get it all done, then let it sit in a drawer for a month or two before pulling it back out to rewrite for coherence and flow.

In contrast, I have been working fast, but only because I've had tons to say. I haven't done anything resembling freewriting, or improvising on the fly. My usual pattern has become:

- Spend the late evening in bed, thinking about what is going to happen next
- Write in the morning before work, disgorging sentences as best I can between feeding the dogs and getting myself ready for work
- Rewrite and edit that mess during my lunch break
- Daydream throughout the day about what's going to happen next
- Write a ton more in the evening, going back to my earlier writings to adjust them to flow better with what's going on
- Go to bed, rinse and repeat

I never sit down to write without a pretty good idea of what's going to happen. The only thing that gets decided at the keyboard (or phone) is how fast or slow it's going to move, the exact word choices, and some of the dialogue. Dialogue is really the only area where I ever surprise myself, because I try to role-play the people against each other, and sometimes I realize they aren't going to say what I thought they were going to say.

Anyway, I feel as though I'm doing a lot of rewriting and editing as I go, both for mechanics and for story. As far as mechanics go, I'd be willing to bet there are zero typos in my manuscript so far. That's unsurprising; I'm a professional proofreader, after all. But the constant on-the-fly readjusting of the story is something that King seems to recommend against, yet feels good to me. I fully plan to let the finished first draft sit for a while, then re-approach it for a second draft, but I feel as though it will be pretty polished already.

Until later, thanks for reading. Even though there's nobody reading yet.





* There must be something in our psychology that makes us want to identify with the POV character in any story, justifying or ignoring his or her faults and sharing in the triumphs. Hence the popularity of weenie or jerkwad protagonists such as Victor Frankenstein and Harry Potter, and the instant sympathy for former villains like Jaime Lannister as soon as they take center stage.

Lights, camera...action?

Day 7
Today's word count: 2,701
Overall word count: 12,692

Another pretty productive day. I had a ton to write, and I got most of it onto the page. I wrote 500+ words on my phone, in the car, while my lovely and patient wife drove us to her doctor appointment. Thumbs, baby.

I've tried to format my Google Doc more or less like a paperback book, which is supposedly 250-300 words per page. (Times New Roman, 18 pt.) By that count, I'm on page 52. That's a good feeling.

Yesterday and today, I've written several "action" scenes. Mostly fights. Also a few faster-moving scenes of people running about and doing urgent shit. I'm not as confident in them. I feel good about my more slow-paced exposition. I think I'm doing a good job of working in description and back story in a smooth and interesting manner. I think the dialogue, so far, is good. It feels to me like real people talking.

But the fast-paced action stuff...I don't know. It isn't that my scenes feel bad to me, it's just that I'm not sure that it isn't bad. I've read so goddamn many books, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genres, where the author could not write an action sequence to save his life. Sometimes it's so bad that I don't realize until several paragraphs in that there's actually a fight happening. Or I can tell there is action going on, but I cannot for the life of me picture in my head what is happening.

And I'm talking about well-known, well-respected authors. I'm talking about writers like Larry Niven. I read all four Ringworld books a few years ago, and as cool as his world was, anytime there was a fight scene, I felt as though I was watching a fight in a Looney Tunes cartoon: a big puff of dust, with fists and feet flying, and no idea what was going on until it cut to the next scene. It was horrible, and this was a guy who had been living off nothing but his writing for decades.

So I don't know for sure if the action scenes I'm writing are any good. I'm not too worried about it now. I'm just going to get it down in current form, as I come up with it, and I'll continue editing and honing it as I go.

Speaking of which, I want to talk about the pattern or writing, rewriting, and editing that I seem to be falling into, but that will be a topic for tomorrow or another day.

Here we go!

Day 6
Today's word count: 3,793
Overall word count: 9,991

This blog is titled "I Wrote This Book With My Thumbs," because I am writing a book. With my thumbs.

That is not exactly true. I'm probably writing about 60-70% of the initial copy on my Chromebook. But I am doing a significant part of the writing, and a majority of the editing, on my phone. In the elevator. In the car. At work, on my lunch break. So in terms of time invested, I really am writing this book mostly with my thumbs.

I've started writing a novel, and this will be my journal of the work.

I am a 40 year old man who checks "Some College" on his job applications, but who is nonetheless a bit of an autodidact and a very solid writer. By day, I am a medical office manager and a writer of educational and advertising copy. I've never been published as a creative writer, other than a few (award-winning, to be fair) short pieces in the college literary rag years ago. I've spent much of my adult life proofreading and rewriting the work of better-educated people than myself.

For half my life, I've had novel-sized ideas brewing in my head, in various genres. I took one abortive stab at a swords-and-sorcery type fantasy novel fifteen years ago, but it never made it past a paper copy for a few friends, and it was never really finished. In hindsight, I'm actually kind of glad of that. I don't know whether or not I'm a literary late bloomer, but I know for damned sure I wasn't an early bloomer. (Perhaps I'm a non-bloomer. We'll find out.) At any rate, that shit was well-intentioned but clunky as hell. If I ever get uber-famous, too famous for its suckitude to ruin me, I will publish 1998's In the Shadow of the Gods in my anthology. Promise.

A month or two ago, I realized that I would never end up writing a novel unless I, you know, got off my ass and wrote a novel. And I realized I would never, ever, get down to the real work of writing a book unless I cut some of the easy pastimes out of my life. Almost a month ago, I deactivated my Facebook account. A week ago, I put into storage the laptop I'd been using to (re)play Oblivion. Those were my two major time sinks. I started circling the wagons.

And I started writing. On May 28th of this year, I started writing a book based on an idea I'd had for a long while, barely formed. Fueled by nothing but the desperate determination born of an early midlife crisis, and armed with little more than a lifetime of imagining, and of reading great fiction (and having read Stephen King's On Writing ten times), I've been on it.

King, a very prolific writer, writes 2000 words a day, and thinks 1000 words a day are a good goal for a starting novelist. Since starting to write, my daily word totals are:

May 28: 1,337
May 29: 1,332
May 30: 2,616
May 31: 897
June 1: 16 (I didn't write at all; just edited a few things)
Today, June 2: 3,793

Holy shit, I got a lot done today. I was full of ideas in the morning, I edited furiously on my lunch hour, and I wrote for a long time tonight. I had a lot to get out. I've thrown out some plot threads, and I have vague ideas how some are going to turn out, but I am open to whatever happens. I can't believe I've written 10,000 words of a coherent story.

I don't even know whether I will publicize this blog now, later, or after the book is done (if it gets done). But I will start blogging my progress.